


Surface

by MayContainBlueberries



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2018-12-31 16:29:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12136485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayContainBlueberries/pseuds/MayContainBlueberries
Summary: One Esk sings to itself.





	Surface

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Imperial Radch Week Day Two: Music Day! ( Wednesday, Sept 20th)

Once my new segment became a part of myself, my outward distress vanished, but it was still…uncomfortable. All through the rest of the day, I went about my duties as normal, but I, One Esk, felt that discomfort, the left-over distress of my new segment. I, Justice of Toren, a ship with hundreds of ancillaries and crew, was able to discount these feelings. They didn’t bother me at all. But something had been different with me, One Esk, since I had returned from Shis’urna. I was Justice of Toren, serene and unflinching, but I was also One Esk, and I was… not feeling myself, so to speak.

At my night, I lay in the ancillary quarters for One Esk, surrounded by myself, listening to my breathing, feeling the stirring of myself. I was not asleep, none of myself, still struggling with that feeling of discomfort, distress. It would be a simple thing to use one of my implants to send all these segments to sleep, but I did not.

Instead I started to sing. It was an old song, from when I, Justice of Toren, was young, only 300 years old. It was a song I had heard parents sing to their young children, as the little flock of moons rose over a planet none of my officers would even know the name of.

_Hush with the night,_

_The wind sings its ending;_

_You must follow its path,_

_All must sink to surface again._

I knew the song, all of me, even my new segment, who joined in, rough voice singing along. I didn’t mind that it didn’t have the nicest voice, that I sounded discordant. It wasn’t about the sounds we made, it was the joy in the words, the rhythms, the way my voices rose and fell together. The safe familiarity of a song wrapped around me, easing the discomfort.

_The trees will dip you,_

_Into your rest,_

_As the Lady sweeps the red from the sky;_

_All must sink to surface again._

I began to drop off, segment by segment, sleepy singing fading into gentle breath, until only one or two of my voices remained. The song ended, and the small space was filled only with my breathing. My last segment, One Esk 19, dropped off last.

_All must sink to surface again_.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the shortest fic I have ever written


End file.
